LOS ANGELES - -- Following the death of singer Michael Jackson, there has been increasing public concern about the drug propofol that police found in his home. Known by the brand name Diprivan or by the generic name propofol, this drug is among the most widely used general anesthetics in the United States. Its purpose is to put patients to sleep or make them semiconscious during uncomfortable procedures, such as colonoscopies.

The drug can be so dangerous that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says only those trained in general anesthesia should administer it.

"Me administering this to you at home, I'm fairly likely to hurt you," said Paul Wischmeyer, an anesthesiologist at the University of Colorado. "You'd need to have a surgery center at your house."

Nearly all of the small but growing number of abuse cases involve doctors and other medical personnel. Because a dose lasts just a few minutes, it's not uncommon for users to inject themselves 80 times a day for the brief high or the sensation of slipping into unconsciousness, according to physicians who have studied Diprivan abuse.

"We're used to administering what's usually a lethal dose if we weren't sitting there," said Dr. Ethan Bryson, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "But when you're doing it to yourself and injecting it in the arm, you can make yourself stop breathing, and if there's no one there to breathe for you, you'll die."

At many hospitals, Diprivan is given the same casual oversight as Tylenol, said Lisa Thiemann, senior director of professional practice for the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists. Three days before Jackson died, the group recommended that the drug be placed in a secure environment.

A 2007 survey by Wischmeyer found that 71 percent of anesthesiology departments he polled had no system to monitor Diprivan, as was done with narcotics such as morphine. He found that the anesthesiology programs where doctors died from Diprivan abuse did not keep track of the drug.

Dr. Omar Manejwala, associate medical director at the William J. Farley Center at Williamsburg Place in Virginia, an addiction treatment center that focuses on physicians, said that nearly all Diprivan abusers started using the drug to overcome insomnia, even though it would knock them out for only a few minutes.

"They describe a transient feeling of pleasure and a relief from the experience of sleep deprivation," he said. They want to do "anything to avoid being awake."

Doctors said that going under with Diprivan, even for several hours, is not the same as sleeping. "You never use propofol for insomnia treatment," Wischmeyer said.

Even before Michael Jackson's death, the anesthetic had been a focus of concern for federal regulators. The attention Jackson's death has attracted to the drug could lead to its becoming a controlled substance.

If the singer was using Diprivan he would have been one of the rare cases of nonmedical personnel abusing it that experts know of. In two known cases, the abusers died.

The FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration were considering making it a controlled drug before Jackson died. Now that push has gotten renewed attention.

Sources have told the Los Angeles Times that detectives found a large quantity of Diprivan in Jackson's home. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, a maker of the drug, said the DEA contacted the company about a lot number stamped on the drug's packaging. The identification could help trace how the drug was obtained.

Dr. Arnold Klein, a dermatologist in Beverly Hills who treated Jackson for 25 years, told CNN's Larry King that the singer was using the drug with an anesthesiologist "to go to sleep at night" while touring Germany. The last time Jackson toured that country was 1997.

"They describe a transient feeling of pleasure and a relief from the experience of sleep deprivation," he said. They want to do "anything to avoid being awake."

Doctors said that going under with Diprivan, even for several hours, is not the same as sleeping. "You never use propofol for insomnia treatment," Wischmeyer said.

Diprivan is not a drug one can buy on the street.

"If indeed he (Jackson) did use it, there is no way he did it by himself," said Dr. Zeev Kain, chairman of the anesthesiology department at University of California, Irvine Medical Center.